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John Wojtowicz

John Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz (/vɔɪˈtoʊvɪtʃ/, voy-TOE-vitch;[1] March 9, 1945 – January 2, 2006) was an American bank robber whose story inspired the film Dog Day Afternoon.[2][3][4]

John Wojtowicz

John Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz

(1945-03-09)March 9, 1945
New York City, U.S.

January 2, 2006(2006-01-02) (aged 60)

New York City, U.S.

2

Bank robbery

20 years imprisonment, served five years.

Early life[edit]

Wojtowicz was the son of a Polish father and an Italian-American mother (nee Terry Basso[5]).[6]

Personal life[edit]

Wojtowicz married Carmen Bifulco in 1967. They had two children and separated in 1969.


In 1971, Wojtowicz met transgender woman Elizabeth Eden at the Feast of San Gennaro in New York City. The two had a public wedding ceremony that year.[6]


Wojtowicz was at some point a member of the Gay Activists Alliance. He used at that time the alias "Littlejohn Basso" (Basso being his mother's maiden name).[7]

Bank robbery[edit]

On August 22, 1972, Wojtowicz, along with Salvatore Naturile and Robert Westenberg, attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank at 450 Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn.[2][3] The Los Angeles Times reported the heist was meant to pay for Eden's gender-affirming surgery (male-to-female).[6] However, Arthur Bell, a respected The Village Voice columnist and investigative journalist who knew Wojtowicz (and was tangentially involved in the negotiations), reported that paying for Eden's surgery was only peripheral to the real motive. The attempted heist was, according to him, a well-planned Mafia operation that went horribly wrong.[7][8]


Wojtowicz and Naturile held seven Chase Manhattan bank employees hostage for fourteen hours.[2][3] Westenberg fled the scene before the robbery got underway after he saw a police car on the street. Wojtowicz, a former bank teller, had some knowledge of bank operations.


Naturile was killed by the FBI during the final moments of the incident; Wojtowicz was arrested.[9]

Later years and death[edit]

In 2001, The New York Times reported that Wojtowicz was living on welfare in Brooklyn.[17] He died of cancer on January 2, 2006, in his mother's home, aged 60.[18]

The Third Memory (1999), directed by artist and first exhibited in a museum context at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and The Renaissance Society in Chicago (in the format of a two-channel video), took Dog Day Afternoon as its starting point[19] and depicts Wojtowicz recreating the events of bank robbery with actor look-a-likes and props on a reconstruction of the set of Lumet's film. Juxtaposed with footage from Dog Day Afternoon, it demonstrates that Wojtowicz's memory appears to have been irrevocably altered by the film about his life.[20] For example, he speculated that President Richard Nixon personally ordered the FBI killing of Salvatore because live news media coverage following the bank robbery that evening was cutting into the network television broadcast of Nixon's re-election acceptance speech at the 1972 Republican National Convention, at The Convention Center in Miami Beach.[21]

Pierre Huyghe

Based on a True Story (2004)

[22]

(also known as Storyville: The Great Sex Addict Heist), by directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013.[23][24][12]

The Dog

Wojtowicz was the subject of multiple documentaries:

Wojtowicz, John (1977). . Jump Cut. No. 15. pp. 31–32.

"Real Dog Day Hero Tells His Story"

. Ironicsans.com. August 22, 2007.

"Dog Day Anniversary"

at IMDb

John Wojtowicz

Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator – Search for John Stanley Wojtowicz or number 76456-158